


Did it hurt? (When you fell from heaven?)

by specificlatentheat



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fluff, Getting Together, Guardian Angel AU, Love, M/M, No Sexual Content, Pining, and putting kuroo in their class / year, awkward writing, but not hardcore, but nothing too mad, dear god pining, eg not mentioning aikiteru, help me what is humour, more like... wingin it, not a whole cast fic sorry, not completely in universe not completely out, relationships, slow burn short fic, that kids show with porter and carl, that was the shit, will have time skips between chapters or excerpts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-14 02:43:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16031324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/specificlatentheat/pseuds/specificlatentheat
Summary: Yamaguchi is a guardian angel (in training) and Tsukishima is just his assigned charge. Over several days, more than a couple months, and a few years, everything changes. Tsukishima grows, and so does Yamaguchi, and they realise together what they need to do, and want to do, are two different things entirely. Letting go may just be the hardest task of them all.(Or: Yamaguchi is sent to Earth to help Tsukishima makes friends. Tsukishima thinks this is ridiculous. He’s not wrong.)





	Did it hurt? (When you fell from heaven?)

Traditionally, guardian angels were supposed to be ethereal, godlike creatures. Whenever he had imagined them, which really wasn’t very often, Tsukishima had always imagined a symmetrically faced blonde woman dressed in white, the epitome of purity and all that’s good in the world.

This boy was definitely nothing like that- but to be fair, he called himself a guardian angel in training, not a fully fledged one. Maybe there was room for him to grow yet.

“Yamaguchi Tadashi,” he had introduced himself cheerfully, on the first day of middle school, “I’m your next door neighbour!”

Tsukushima’s neighbours were an old couple, who never had visitors and looked too old to be having children his age, and a widowed mother, who’s children he knew well enough after painfully awkward babysitting sessions where he’d never know exactly how to act with them.

Did he treat them as children, and do the stupid baby voice? Or should he treat them like they understood what he was saying? Either way, he felt incredibly stupid while trying, and usually took to making them eat way too fast, and then dunking them in the tub quickly afterwards.

He let them mess about with the bubbles (it was actually pretty cute), and then tucked them into bed. He’d read them a bedtime story in an awkward, stilted tone, but they never seemed to care that much.

They were always stupidly happy to see him, and giggled at him whenever he’d get frustrated. They reminded him of the boy standing in front of him at that very moment.

“No you’re not,” Tsukishima drew his brows together, “I’ve never seen you before in my life, and I would have.” The other boy’s face didn’t drop at all, instead pointing to the house he’d spent less time in, with greenery climbing up the walls and wild flowers overgrown next to the lavender in the flowerbed.

“That one’s my grandparents, I moved here last month but I only spent a week settling in before going back home,” the explanation confused Tsukishima but he wasn’t going to ask about it, because then that’d make him seem interested, “and I spent a while getting ready for the new school year, and we’re going to the same one!”

He was referring to the identical book bags they were both holding, they were a dark blue with the school emblem in the right hand corner.

“And I care because?” Tsukishima asked rhetorically, and Yamaguchi shook his head with a smile. He seemed genuinely understanding, which was so unnatural and overall strange that Tsukishima began to dislike his all knowing nature.

“I understand why you’d be confused, but we’re going to be friends,” Yamaguchi was undeterred from his determination to be kind to him, even though Tsukishima was trying his best to make him change his mind.

“Why?” Tsukishima asked, outwardly calm but inwardly freaking out. His life was fine the way it was, he didn’t need anyone else except his family, and the kids from next door. It was just so odd that someone would want to be friends with him, he was usually too intimidating for people to bother.

“What’s your name?” The shorter boy asked slightly suddenly, and Tsukishima fought the urge to fiddle with his glasses when he replied. He was getting nervous, the boy seemed to be made of the most resilient material, and so he was making a huge effort to continue the dying conversation.

“Tsukishima Kei,” he replied quietly, but steadily. If he just agreed and moved on, maybe the boy wouldn’t try so hard.

“Well, Tsukishima Kei, I’m your own guardian angel!” He explained cheerily, and Tsukishima’s face dropped subtly. The only person who wanted to befriend him was actually just a weirdo.

“I don’t need a guardian angel.” Tsukishima muttered, wondering if his parents had set the other boy up to befriend him. “Thanks anyways, but you can go now.” He began to walk off, but Yamaguchi caught up to him with ease.

“I’m serious about this!” he walked backwards while talking to him, without a single glance in the right direction, “I was sent to get you to make some friends, and that starts with me!”

“Friends?” Tsukishima laughed, “did my parents ask you to do this?” He could have easily been angry, but he felt that it was almost too much effort to bother about it with such a sweet looking boy.

He looked like the slightest push or harsh word could make him topple, and Tsukishima could already tell he was putting on a lot of false bravado, when he kept coming back after being rejected by Tsukishima over and over again.

“No!” Yamaguchi said this loudly, and then quietened down, even though there weren’t many people in the streets to hear them at that time or the morning, “Well... I can’t tell you who sent me, but they’re definitely not your parents.”

“Okay, my guardian angel, that’s enough now,” Tsukishima decided to just let him believe what he wanted to, and he was pretty sure the boy was his parents’ new way to try and make him socialise. “We have to go to school.”

Yamaguchi was both pleased and disgruntled, he was pleased because he had already acknowledged that he was his guardian angel, and he had heard many stories of people who were much harder to convince, and had to be followed around or told many days in a row for them to actually believe it.

But he had been kindly told to shove off, as Tsukishima pulled up his headphones, covering his ears, to ignore him. Yamaguchi sighed and walked along beside him- that was all he could do, for then.

-break-

“What’ll it take for you to believe me?” It was only breaktime, and Yamaguchi had just discovered that Tsukishima hadn’t actually believed that he was his guardian angel, and he was just humouring him. The taller boy had just thought it was a metaphor.

“Written proof- a signed contract, maybe?” He asked sarcastically, sitting at a table with his chin in his hands. They were sitting at a picnic bench, watching the other kids run about.

Yamaguchi called it boring while Tsukishima called it people watching. “I know a lot about you! I knew your name is Tsukishima Kei, and your brother is Tsukishima Akiteru, and you like watching documentaries on Sunday nights!”

Tsukishima paused, it was a bit creepy how he knew that last tidbit, but not out of the realms of possibility that he had heard that information elsewhere. “My parents could have told you that while asking you to spend time with me.”

“Well they didn’t!” Yamaguchi was getting more and more frustrated with the boy, “I can do magic.” He whispered this ferociously, and Tsukishima pretty much choked.

That was definitely not a normal delusion for a middle schooler to have, but being a guardian angel wasn’t either. “Oh yeah?” He asked noncommittally, “then why don’t you magic up some friends for me, then leave?”

“Well, I’m not a real guardian angel,” Yamaguchi said, with a slight frown of guilt, “not yet, at least. I was sent here as a project, to see how I cope with real people.”

“You spent your time in angel heaven, or whatever, with fake people?” Tsukishima thought he was pretty smart with that comment, it made him chuckle to himself.

“No! Anyways, I have the angel handbook with me at all times,” he nodded self assuredly, looked around to see if anyone was looking, and then clicked his fingers and held out his left arm with his fingers mock wrapped around the spine of a book already. The spine soon materialised, followed with the rest of the book.

“What?” Tsukishima blinked once. Then twice. “What was that?” He reached to grab the book out of his hand, but Yamaguchi quickly held the book to his chest and leant back.

It was actually pretty big, looking like an official religious book rather than a handbook. “Can I look at that?” Tsukishima asked politely, and Yamaguchi shrugged.

“I dunno,” was the answer, not expecting such a polite response to his aversion. “I’ll read ahead and see what it says.”

He flicked to the back of the book, where 1 to 3 statements were numbered into bulletpoints. They were written in thick black ink, with thin and thick lines for handwriting.

‘1. You must not reveal yourself to humans who aren’t your subject.

2\. You must not use your powers to cause bodily harm to human participants, only to alter memories if necessary.

3\. You must not lose or alter your identifying charm.’

“It doesn’t say anything about showing you this in the main rules, so I’m sure it’d be fine,” Yamaguchi casually turned the book sideways to allow him to look at the page.

Tsukishima immediately reached forwards to touch the page, to confirm it was real. It was. The page felt rough under his fingertips, and he traced a line below the first line. His eyes flicked to the bottom, and he took a deep breath, taking it in properly for the first time.

“So, you’re an angel-in-training?” He asked slowly, staring at him like he had seen him for the first time. The younger boy’s greenish eyes seemed impossibly wide, and freckles seemed magical after Tsukishima’s newfound knowledge.

“You could call it that,” Yamaguchi tried to smile in what he hoped was an encouraging way.

“What does the third rule mean?” He asked, with a curious tilt of his head.

“It’s basically... How do I describe this?” Yamaguchi asked rhetorically, and looked upwards before looking back at him, “a tracker? Some angels will have an object that they hold onto.”

“What’s yours?” Tsukishima scanned his person, focusing on the blue bag beside him. Yamaguchi chuckled awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck guiltily.

“Funny story...” He trailed off for a second with a sheepish smile, “I lost them so many times, they made my identifying feature my freckles,” Tsukishima was amazed, and vaguely horrified. The freckles were actually magical!

And they were a punishment? “What were they?” He was asking a lot of questions, and usually he would hide his interest, but this situation was a lot different to what he was used to.

“A pair of headphones,” he laughed and pulled some out from his bag, “not this pair, obviously, but I always end up breaking them or leaving them somewhere.”

Tsukishima sighed. He... Had a guardian angel? His guardian angel seemed to be quite useless though, he seemed pretty much to be a normal human, disregarding the whole summoning a real book event.

He could have just been holding it before, and he hadn’t noticed. That was plausible, right?

“Ok, say I believed you.” He started off, “why are you helping me get friends, isn’t that a bit mundane? Who asked you to do this?”

“I don’t know what mundane means,” Yamaguchi started, “but making friends would change your life! That’s no small thing! And I already said I couldn’t tell you who asked me to do this.”

Tsukishima groaned, “this is too faux inspirational, I might lose it.” He grabbed the book’s corner and twisted it towards himself, starting to flip through it. Yamaguchi looked a bit offended, but it didn’t last for long, as the book slammed shut as he pulled the page down.

Yamaguchi was sitting with his hands beside him, and Tsukishima couldn’t deny that the book had closed entirely by itself.

“Ok, I believe you.” Tsukishima stated simply, trying to ignore the flush creeping up his neck. It was just so stupid to believe him, like believing in the tooth fairy, but he did it anyways. “But what now?”

Yamaguchi didn’t have time to answer, as the bell signifying the end of their break had rung loudly- he tapped the book’s cover thrice, and it was gone. He grabbed Tsukishima’s hand, and pulled him along towards the other kids.

Tsukishima pulled his hand out of his grip, and stood silently next to him. His heart was beating so fast, he supposed Yamaguchi could hear it, feel it. The blood rushed through his veins and breath caught in his throat, but he stood there quietly, as if he wasn’t bothered at all.

Yamaguchi knew. He could feel it.

**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me if you like it, or hate it, or want to read more, even though you hate it. I want to write more, but I’m never motivated to finish anything, I have so many plans for this but they make me sad! I would write something short and fluffy, which is what I was planning to do with this, but short and fluffy has already been done about 17293992 times. Thank you for reading, have a nice day :)


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